SATIRE: "Helping Out" Nathaniel Jeanson: A Hyper-Polyploidal Adam & Eve?

{This is satire. Hopefully it will be read as peaceful satire.}

I’ve greatly enjoyed reading @evograd’s article, an excellent tutorial on various fundamentals:
Human Genetics Confirms Mutations as the Drivers of Diversity and Evolution

That article got me exploring these ideas and I’d like to solicit feedback from @evograd, @Rumraket, @Timothy_Horton, @T_aquaticus, @structureoftruth, @Chris_Falter, @Michael_Callen, @John_Harshman, @cwhenderson, @glipsnort, and others. So here goes.

I have followed Nathaniel Jeanson’s brand of “creation science” with considerable interest, so I was drawn to this summary by @evograd:

In his book, Jeanson advocates for a model that has gained some traction in “creation science” circles in recent years, representing an attempt by creationists to explain the extensive genetic diversity in modern populations. Put simply, they recognise that there is far too much genetic variation in most species (and especially between the many species within “kinds”) to be explained by just a few thousand years worth of mutations at current mutation rates. Their explanation? That the original members of each “kind” (Adam and Eve for humans) were originally created with a huge amount of variation already present in their genomes, in the form of extensive heterozygosity which has since been spread into modern populations.

Just for fun, I thought I would offer Nathaniel Jeanson my “help” as a brain-storming ex-YEC. You see, I think I have a good understanding of the kinds of “science-y” sounding arguments which work well with the kinds of “creation science” audiences one finds at Ray Comfort and Eric Hovind conferences.

Not to brag, but I was a bit of a prodigy in my younger days. Indeed, I was once offered an endowed chair in creation science, specifically the prestigious Dunning-Kruger Chair of Flood Geology Apologetics at George McCready Price University. Unfortunately, my busy schedule elsewhere made a Visiting Professor in Absentia position difficult to maintain with the attention it didn’t deserve. The appointment soon proved entirely impractical, and quickly devolved into more of a folding chair. (Of course, de-evolution is valued on such campuses, so that wasn’t all bad.)

Getting down to business now, I’ll try my best to help Dr. Jeanson. I propose that Adam (and, by derivation, Eve was well) was created de novo with an N-polyploid genome of extremely high N. How high was that N? It was just high enough to account for the extensive heterozygosity observed in modern day Homo sapiens populations.

Of course, with the Fall, the N-polyploidy-maintaining fruit of the Tree of Life was no longer available to Adam and Eve and their children. So the Order(N) hetereozygosity of Homo sapiens dropped in successive generations—though not as rapidly as that N declined after Noah’s Flood. For the Adamic generations up until the flood, there was still enough polyploidy to support human lifespans of up to nearly a thousand years. After the flood, the steadily dropping N-polyploidy was nevertheless sufficient to give Noah’s descendants all of the allele diversity we observe among humans today.

As the N in human N-polyploidy dropped following the flood, the genetic repair mechanisms became less reliable and lifespans dropped like rocks to an average of three score and ten. Nevertheless, the original allele diversity was largely preserved but now variously distributed in Noah’s descendant generations and tribes. Yes, it was sin that reduced N-polyploidy humanity to the stumbling bands of fallible diploids we are today—but fallible, sinful diploids with surprisingly varied alleles nonetheless, despite our all descending from a single pair, Adam and Eve.

By the way, this same plunge in N-polyploidy after the Fall also explains the extensive heterozygosity observed in countless other species which have descended from the original Genesis kinds. Indeed, I propose that Ken Ham add an exhibit at his Ark Encounter featuring my explanation for how 36 cat species could have arisen from the original Felidae family (“cat kind”.) The original N-polyploid cat kind pair possessed all of the alleles were observe today—or at least most of them, cuz I’m going to allow the occasional mutation as part of the microevolution of the past 4400 years since the flood. Over the centuries, as N dropped, the original alleles clustered in separate populations which produced the cat family species we observe today: lions, tigers, cheetahs, panthers, house cats, Garfield™, and the late Grumpy Cat™. (Garfield, by the way, can be considered a living fossil.)

It is also worth noting that Noah’s Ark contained either seven pairs or seven individuals of each clean animal kind. (Determining whether seven or fourteen of each clean animal kind is the meaning of the Hebrew text of Genesis is an exegetical exercise beyond the scope of this thread. It’s a tough one to crack and scholars disagree.) So with the clean animal kinds, that post-Flood heterozygosity was further enhanced by having a seven times larger starter population on the ark.

Oops. I just realized that an unknown number of each clean animal kind from the ark was sacrificed as a burnt offering after the flood. However, I will propose by sheer speculative fiat, a cherished AIG tradition, that (1) the clean animals on Noah’s Ark were supernaturally fecund, and multiplied like rats, which, by the way, is an unclean animal; and (2) in the interval between Noah stepping off the ark and the burnt offerings of clean animals, the reproduction rate of the clean animal kind pairs was multiplied exponentially, with new generations becoming mature and fertile adults within minutes. (Yes, it was a miracle. Just because the Bible doesn’t mention it doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. The accelerated rates of reproduction were a relatively short-lived by-product of the accelerated radioisotope decay rates which the Bible describes in the early chapters of Genesis.)

Also, when Noah sacrificed that unknown number of clean animals after the flood, he avoided the high-N-polyploid individuals, because they were needed to maximize post-Flood hetereozygosity. Only diploid individuals were sacrificed. He needed highly diverse breeding stock.

Yes, I probably should have published this in the peer-review Answers journal, which is published by AIG. (The journal’s peer-review committee has a nifty Fast Track Hack™ option for favored donors. They even offer easy payment terms.) But I wanted to give Peaceful Science the exclusive.


POSTSCRIPT:

Meanwhile, I realize that I have never used the word heterozygosity with a higher frequency than in the above essay. It’s a very cool word and it’s fun to say. Even non-biologist residents of the State of West Virginia will recognize the word from their state’s official motto: Heterozygositas omnibus. (“Heterozygosity for all.”) And those of us who are a bit older will recall the million-selling hit by LLoyd Price, “Heterozygosity”, all the way back in 1959. (As the radio discjockeys used to say, “And where were you when this song was number one!” The last word would always echo from intentionally exaggerated reverb.)

Over and over, I tried to prove my love to you,
Over and over, what more can I do
Over and over, my friend says I’m a fool
But over and over, I’ll be a fool for you.

'Cause you got heterozygosity
Walk, with heterozygosity
Talk, with heterozygosity
Smile, with heterozygosity
Charm, with heterozygosity
Love, with heterozygosity

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This is as good of a time as any to announce the upcoming release of my latest book, The Hyper-Ploidal Adam and Eve: The Surprising Science of the Fall of N-Polyploidy in Humans (HarpureCollins Publishers.)

Peaceful Science participants may use the following discount code when pre-ordering:
“bogus-hermeneutics-on-steroids”

(I’m creating a webpage for collecting your endorsements.)

We discussed this briefly before when I brought the fact that many Creationist scientists (and Ken Ham) believe Noah’s survivors produced all human diversity including Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Floresiensis. That’s one heck of a genome!

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Polyploid is not remotely plausible. Mosaics, however, is on the outer fringes of plausibles.

Nor is a relatively recent global flood which leaves behind no evidence. Plus, there is always Matthew 19:26. (That prooftext is fundamental to sound flood geology.)

Adam and Eve were created with highly diverse gametes, which proceeded to sort out into the hundreds of children they had during their long, fertile lifetimes (most of them, including all the girls, un-noted in Genesis).

By “unnoted”, I assume you mean Adam’s and Eve’s children were not specifically named in the text but only summarized in Genesis 5:3-4:

3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. 4 After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters.

I vaguely recall some rabbinical source (??) which claimed that Adam and Eve had around 20+ sons and 20+ daughters. Of course, considering lifespans over 900 years, that’s not terribly impressive. But traditions of that sort most likely depended upon symbolism and numerological factors more than statistical details.

Eve’s 40 pregnancies would qualify her uterus for the uterus hall of fame.

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Even so, the Russian woman who officially gave birth to nearly 80 children did so in an even more impressive typical post-Flood human lifespan. (Of course, she gave birth to many sets of twins, triplets, and quadruplets so that could be considered an unfair shortcut to a world’s record.)

Perhaps a supernaturally hyper-polyploidal Eve was even more impressive because of the diversity of her offspring—because she and Adam were so extremely heterozygotic. (That’s another fun word.)

(Yes. Tongue-in-cheek.)

Why in that long list of feedback elities I AM NOT in the list?? How do i know if I’m covered by the OTHERS group?What does one have to do, or be, to be in the elite? Is money donations a factor? Just kidding. Satire I guess.